The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) (36 page)

There were demons everywhere—you knew who and what they were by the studded leather bodysuits they wore—and they did the enforcing, making sure the souls carried out the duties assigned to them in Hell. Some of the demons were humanoid, others more oddly shaped, their skins the texture and color of rotting fruit. But every single one of them wore the same miserable expression on their face.

I thought the demons looked about as happy to be trapped in Hell as the souls being punished.

Just to give you a sampling of what I saw down there:

We passed a demon standing on top of a naked woman. The woman was lying at the base of a giant pile of horseshit, her mouth wide open, guzzling down the excrement as the demon prodded her with a stick.

Every other prod, she crawled forward an inch, her body tunneling further into the pile.

It was so disgusting I had to turn my head away.

Another demon—this one was bright blue, but otherwise humanoid—stood over a semi-circle of naked human men sitting on the ground. At first, they appeared to be doing intricate beadwork, but upon closer inspection, I realized they were actually sewing thousands of sequins onto brassieres.

I pointed to the men, asking Snarly head who the sequined bras were for. His answer was sad, though rather apropos:

“The demons put on a drag show every Friday night in the Fallen Angel Quarter. The men you see before you are here because they bullied a homosexual to death on Earth. This is their punishment: sewing sequins on brassieres for drag queens.”

It was a trip to hear Snarly head use the word “brassieres” in a sentence, but the mood of the place kept my laughter in check.

“I heard the drag shows are supposed to be amazing down here,” I said.

Snarly head nodded then suddenly flicked his gaze behind him to make sure the dumb head carrying Alternate Frank still had a good hold on the prisoner, before returning his gaze back to me.

“If we were here for different reasons, we would go see a show. It’s well worth the price of admission,” he added.

“And what’s the price of admission?” I asked curiously.

“A kiss.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

Snarly head looked down at Runt, who was trotting between us. Whatever he was going to say was naughty enough he didn’t want his daughter to hear.

“Go walk over by Daniel,” he said to her.

Runt shook her head defiantly, but I reached down and patted her on the head.

“Your dad can tell me later,” I said to her—and Runt thumped my leg with her tail, telling me if I ever got the four-one-one, she wanted all the details.

Though we got some funny stares, we were mostly left alone as we journeyed through the different “neighborhoods” occupying the East Gate of Hell. The demons seemed to know who we were, and every now and then one of them would bow to Daniel, but that was it. The poor souls there for punishment hardly even looked at us.

Our path led us through a number of different Christian sects, wove us in and out of the Jewish quarter, and then finally dumped us out of the monotheist section via one of the Hindu neighborhoods. Judas had taken a very direct route to guide us through the eastern part of Hell, so we only saw a fraction of the different neighborhoods—and even this was almost more than I could handle.

At the end of the Hindu area, we’d watched three human men being force-fed raw hamburger by a bored-looking demon with pale green skin, four arms, and a quintet of triple-D breasts. She was daintily picking up large chunks of meat from a fly-ridden wheelbarrow then ramming the raw flesh down the men’s throats. If they threw it back up, she would get a trowel, shovel up the regurgitated meat, and force it back into their mouths.

I watched, disgusted, as the men cried while they chewed.

“Don’t look at that,” Marcel said, holding up his hand to block my view.

“Stop it,” I said, pushing his hand away. “What kind of a Death am I if I’m too much of a pussy to look at what really happens here in Hell?”

Marcel thought about what I’d said, rolling it around in his mind before finally agreeing.

“You’re right, Death. It would make you a pussy.”

Well, I didn’t want anyone to think I was a pussy, so after that exchange, I kept my eyes glued to every indignity and atrocity we passed. Needless to say, I was very happy when we left the misery behind us so we could venture farther into the interior of Hell, where this She’ol was supposedly located.

“This is creepy,” I said to Marcel, as the last of the tenements dropped away behind us, and we crossed into what appeared to be an expansive junkyard.

As far as the eye could see, the horizon was littered with junk. Empty rusted-out cars, metal pieces of God knew what, trash, broken toys, torn sheaves of paper—I didn’t know where all the trash came from or what it was supposed to represent, but it smelled awful. Like piss and vomit and rotting garbage, all mixed together in a sickly sweet bouquet.

“It smells like death,” I said to Marcel, who was standing beside me.

He grinned back at me—and out of the corner of my eye I caught Daniel staring at us.

“Excuse me,” I said to Marcel then I headed over to where Daniel stood talking with Cerberus and Judas.

They were trying to decide which way we were going to go through the junkyard. There seemed to be some disagreement as to which path was safest, with Judas and Cerberus of one mind and Daniel of another.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked Daniel.

He glanced at the others then nodded.

“Okay, sure.”

Daniel followed me back toward the Hindu tenements until we were far enough away from the others they couldn’t accidentally eavesdrop on us. I had no interest in having a personal conversation with Daniel while everyone listened in and judged us.

“Look,” I said, turning on my heel, and spinning around to face him. “I love you and I’m sorry. I’m down to talk about all the other stuff later, but I just wanted you to know that.”

He ran his hands through his hair, messing it up in the front, and I had to stop myself from reaching out to smooth it down.

“Me, too,” he said. “That I’m sorry and that I love you.”

“Good,” I said, holding out my hand for him to shake. “Friends again?”

He took my hand then used it to pull me in closer.

“More than friends.”

He kissed me hard on the lips, his tongue slipping inside my mouth, tasting me. I melted into him, enjoying the intensity of the embrace as his body pushed against mine hungrily. But
instead of continuing the kiss as I’d expected him to, he suddenly pushed me away. I stared back at his handsome face, shocked by his raw, sexual aggression.

“Don’t forget. There’s more where that came from if you’re a good girl,” he said, enjoying my dazed expression—he’d never been so dominant before and I had to admit it kind of turned me on.

I nodded, my body wanting more right then and there, but he just grinned down at me and took my hand, leading me back to where the others were still waiting.

Daniel was in a much better mood after that. Even letting Cerberus and Judas have their way, so we ended up taking the safer but longer path through the hellish junkyard. As we climbed through the trash, I stayed close to Daniel and Runt—and Marcel stayed close to me. Normally this would have gotten on my nerves, but for some reason I didn’t mind having a makeshift honor guard.

“What’s with the junkyard?” I asked Daniel as we picked our way through a mangled VW minibus, three decapitated dolls sitting in the driver’s seat.

“It’s not junk, Cal,” he said, offering me his hand as we climbed up onto the roof then clambered down the front bumper. “It’s all the sorrow of human existence concretized into stuff”—he indicated the junk—“and it can be toxic.”

“How so?”

Runt had circumvented the VW instead of climbing through it, and this had somehow gotten her ahead of us. We found her waiting by the engine of an old lawn mower, tail thwacking against a rusted-out metal filing cabinet.

“Find yourself in the wrong part of the junkyard,” Daniel said. “Touch the wrong thing, and you’ll end up as part of the scenery.”

I’d been about to touch a piece of metal signage wrought in the shape of a snail, but I thought better of it and yanked my hand away.

“What?”
I said, upset, as Daniel laughed at me.

“We’re in a safe part. Nothing around here will get you. It’s why Cerberus and Judas wanted to come this way.”

Suddenly I heard a high-pitched whine coming from just ahead of us. This was followed by a sharp, angry bark.

“Runt!” I screamed and started blindly running in the direction of the barking, almost tripping on an exposed piece of metal sticking out of the ground.

“Hold up, Cal!” I heard Daniel yell behind me, but I kept running.

I found the hellhound pup standing on the bottom of an upside-down rowboat and I fell to my knees beside her, wrapping my arms around her neck.

“Runt!” I cried, hugging her tightly.

“It’s all right, Cal,” she said, licking my face. “No one’s hurt. It’s just, well, Dad…”

She looked over at Cerberus, who was standing a few feet away from us amidst a sea of junked cars. He wore a stunned expression on the faces of all three of his heads.

“What’s happened?” Daniel said, racing to my side and kneeling down beside me to make sure Runt and I were okay.

Marcel and Judas joined the party a moment later, having had to backtrack to find us.

Only then did Snarly head finally speak:

“I don’t know how he did it, but your Alternate Frank has escaped.”

Freezay’s shoes made funny
splotching
noises as he jogged along the sidewalk. He felt awkward, all cold and wet and alone, as he made his way down the well-kept suburban street, but he tried not to think about where he was—just focused his mind, instead, on where he wanted to be going.

He’d swum until he’d hit the beach and then he’d started running, his feet sinking into the sand as the tiny grains did everything in their power to slow him down. He’d ignored the pain in his calves, pushing himself to pick up the pace as he hit the stairwell leading up to the road, and then taking the stairs two at a time.

He didn’t know why he felt compelled to run, but the sensation of his body being in forward locomotion was ecstatic. Even the ache in his calves was tolerable, making him feel alive for the first time in days. He was happy to be moving, to be stretching his muscles and using the pent-up energy he always carried around inside of him.

This was the energy that got him into trouble. Energy he had to slake with activity, or else it would make him cross lines he shouldn’t be crossing. It was what had gotten him kicked out of the Psychical Bureau of Investigations—

No, he didn’t want to think about that right now. He’d made
a mistake, asked the wrong questions, and turned himself into the enemy. It was dead and done now. Nothing left to say or do, but move forward with his life and not dwell in the past.

As he jogged down the street, a quiet stretch of sidewalk and asphalt lined with clapboard houses and small dune-like yards full of beach grass, he began to assemble the puzzle in his mind’s eye. There was enough light from the moon and the streetlights above him to get the gist of where he was headed, and he found he quite enjoyed running in the semi-darkness. It was cold out, the wind causing the skin underneath his wet clothes to pimple with gooseflesh. He ignored the chill, pushing himself harder as he let his mind wander where it wanted, picking up the pieces of the plot and fitting them together where he could.

He had a cell phone, but it was for sure waterlogged, and he didn’t know who he would’ve called anyway. He was on his own for now and he’d best use his time wisely, best put his thinking cap on and figure out what kind of mess Calliope had gotten herself into before it was too late.

He didn’t know what’d happened to Caoimhe and Daniel and Starr, but he suspected—no, he
knew
there was something fishy about the car explosion. It had Starr’s fingerprints all over it, but he couldn’t be 100 percent certain she was responsible. Sure, she was a little bitch and she’d made a number of sly moves, had manipulated him, and dragged him around by the penis, but it didn’t mean she was responsible for the car getting blown up.

The more he thought about it, the less it jibed with the Siren’s modus operandi. She was a narcissist, one who favored easy manipulations to turn a situation in her favor—so, why go to all the trouble of blowing up a car and tying him to a coral reef? How did she benefit?

As an investigator, he’d learned early on that a rush to judgment usually meant you were missing some of the more pertinent pieces of information. He knew Starr had an angle—because everyone had one—he just didn’t know what it was.

So, who had wanted him dead and why? Who had a vested interest in seeing him wiped off the face of the Earth for good?

He wracked his brains, thinking of old cases, people who held grudges, angry men and women he’d brought to justice.
His gut told him it would be someone connected to the ocean, someone who felt safest working in water, as water had been their weapon of choice.

And then it hit him—he knew who Starr was working for.

Years ago, Freezay had had a run-in with one of the Japanese Sea Gods. Watatsumi was the schmuck’s name and he’d lived in a squirrelly underwater grotto deep in the waters off the Eastern Seaboard. A real piece of work, he’d been using wish-fulfillment jewels to seduce wealthy, seagoing human beings. Once he’d suckered them in with the jewel’s magic, he’d turn his victims into tuna, treating the poor human-fish hybrid creatures as though they were his own personal slaves.

Freezay’s department had put a stop to Watatsumi’s little sideline business, but he remembered the Japanese Sea God’s name had come up more recently in connection with Callie and one of the other “possible” Deaths. The guy called Frank, who was now doing time in a Purgatorial prison for trying to murder Callie with…
a wish-fulfillment jewel
.

Now all the pieces of the puzzle were fitting together.